


only if for a night

by mishcollin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, Fallen Castiel, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin/pseuds/mishcollin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is captured by a djinn. Dean goes slightly crazy, and Cas discovers a thing or two about himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	only if for a night

“So get this,” Sam says.

Dean groans.

Sam stares at him reproachfully for one, two, three seconds before pointedly saying, “Garth called.”

“And?” Dean asks, perking up a bit in his seat.

“Possible djinn case up north in Sioux City. Three women and one guy have gone missing in the span of two weeks.” Sam flips his laptop so Dean can skim the articles pulled up on the screen. “One of the articles reports seeing a man with strange, dark tattoos and glowing eyes one night while he was coming home from a night shift. Near a local abandoned warehouse. Short time later, four bodies turned up in the same warehouse. The police couldn’t believe it; they said it was almost like the life was drained right out of them. They found needle marks during the autopsies.” Sam raises his eyebrows at Dean. “Sound familiar?”

“Yeah,” Dean mutters. “Ugh, djinn. I fucking hate those things.”

“Djinn?” Cas asks contemplatively from where he’s perched on the bunker’s living room sofa. “I ran into a djinn once. They’re self-entitled, indulgent creatures. Clever, though.”

“They’re skeevy,” Dean says with a shudder of remembrance. “But we don’t really have a choice on this one. Four bodies is four too many.” He sighs and downs the rest of his beer. “C’mon, Sammy. I guess we’re hitting the road.”

“I’m coming with you,” Cas says, clambering to his feet and stretching.

“No, you’re not.”

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas says in nearly a growl, locking his jaw, and Dean hears Sam bite back a weary sigh. Dean can understand his frustration, to an extent—he and Cas have been squabbling for the last week now, with Dean intent on Cas staying home to get bed-rest and Cas hell-bent on directly the opposite.

“Shut it, Sam,” Dean says with a pointed finger as Sam opens his mouth to intervene. “Cas, you’re staying and that’s final. You’re human now, and—”

“So I’m useless?” Cas asks, and Dean knows he’s touched a nerve pulling the mortal card. Cas stalks over to him, bristling, and he’s actually quite menacing for six feet of messy bed-hair and an oversized flannel shirt. “Oh no, that’s right, I’m a _liability_. I can make my own choices, Dean!”

“Not right now, you can’t,” Dean says, pitching forward in his seat as Cas towers over him, fists clenched. “Come on, Cas, be real. You’re still weak from falling—”

“It’s been three weeks, Dean! You don’t have any right to mandate what I do, it’s _my_ choice to do what I want with _my_ mortal life—”

“Like hell it is, Cas! I’m not sending you in there on a kamikaze mission without your mojo when you haven’t even been trained! I’m sorry, but I won’t risk it.”

Dean hears Cas’s teeth snap and grind together, his blue eyes practically glacial.

“Alright,” Sam says in a measuredly calm voice from his seat on the opposite end of the table, his eyes flickering back and forth between Dean and Cas, “let’s all just chill out for a minute, okay? I realize you two are suffering from a bit of, um…cabin fever. I get that you’re both on short fuses. But there’s no need to blow up over it, okay? Cas?”

Cas ignores Sam and leans forward over Dean, all aggression. “I may have been your lapdog as an angel, Dean, but you have _no_ right to dictate what I do and don’t do as a human. If you’d quit babying me for five whole minutes, you’d see I can provide for myself.”

Dean stares at Cas with his mouth slightly ajar, not even bothering to mask the hurt Cas’ words had stirred, but clenches his jaw just as Cas seems to soften and says, “That was out of line, Dean, I’m sorry—”

Dean jolts to his feet in a moment of fury and shoves at Cas’ chest, sending him stumbling backwards. “No, you know what? You meant that. So fuck you, Cas. You weren’t my lapdog, you made your own damn choices. So you know what, I’m done looking out for you. If you’re so convinced you can do it on your own, then fine. Sorry for trying to _help_ , God forbid.”

Cas’ eyes are wide and apologetic, his eyebrows crested upward in a contrite expression, and he says, quietly, “Dean—”

“No, we’re done.” Dean knocks into him, hard, as he goes past, trying to ignore the feeling of Cas’ eyes trailing after him.

 

 

 

 

\--

The car ride up to Sioux City is awkward, to say the least. Dean’s eyes keep flicking up to glare at Cas in the rearview mirror, who’s pointedly refusing to meet his gaze and is staring in gloomy boredom out the back window.

Sam is shuffling through the files he’d printed out, a slight furrow in the crease of his brow.

“One thing I don’t understand,” Sam says after about an hour or so of driving, “is that this guy actually saw the djinn. Aren’t djinn notoriously evasive? Seems like a rookie mistake to me.”

Dean ponders that then shrugs. “I dunno. I guess what matters is that we know who’s doing it.”

“I wouldn’t say so,” Sam says, narrowing his eyes and tapping the file nervously against his knee. “We’ll just have to be extra careful.”

“Got any weigh-in, Cas?” Dean asks with deliberate mock-cheer, and Cas’ eyes cut sharply to meet his in the rearview mirror. They battle it out silently for a moment, gazes heated and unbroken, before Sam says, quietly, “Dean, road.”

Dean breaks the stare and tightens his hands over the steering wheel.

“No, I don’t have any weigh-in,” Cas says eventually. “Other than that Sam is right; we should be careful.”

 _The most careful thing we could’ve done,_ Dean thinks, _is kept you home,_ but he doesn’t say that. Doesn’t say anything at all.

 

 

 

 

\--

“This is a bad idea,” Dean mutters, tightening his clammy hold on the blood-dipped knife as he, Sam, and Cas crouch in the bushes and stare ahead at the looming, empty warehouse.

“Another two have gone missing just today,” Sam whispers, and Cas shifts restlessly beside Dean. “I have a feeling we’ll find them in there. We can't go back for a back-up plan now, Dean, not when there are more people at stake.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says with a sigh. “Just…both of you, be careful, okay?” He looks directly at Cas as he says this, and it clearly doesn’t go unnoticed because there’s a tick in Cas’ jaw and his fingers tighten around the hilt of his blade.

“I’ll see if I can manage,” Cas replies acerbically without meeting his gaze, and Dean looks away from him, back toward the warehouse, with a wince. Sure, Sam may dislike Dean and Cas bickering, but Dean hates it. It feels petty, after all they’ve been through, and although he’d never openly admit it, it stings a bit when Cas is pissed at him. Cas is basically Dean’s only friend left, after all, after Sam.

“Alright,” Dean says, shaking thoughts of Cas from his head, “stay together,” and they move forward, all but melting into the shadows.

 

 

 

 

\--

Castiel doesn’t stay with Sam and Dean. He’s never been good at following orders, anyway, and he doesn’t know if he can stomach the way Dean keeps looking fretfully over at him, as though checking that he hasn’t tripped and fallen or gotten abducted.

He’d only been a warrior of _heaven_ , after all. Just because he’d lost his angelic abilities didn’t mean he’d completely forgotten his fight training or his common sense, for that matter.

Castiel shakes his head in irritation and continues down the abandoned hallway, tilting his head and listening to his soft footfalls and the way old water leaks and groans from the pipes overhead. No doubt Sam and Dean would’ve noticed his absence by now, and Dean would be furious with him later for splitting up with them. _Screw him,_ Castiel thinks. Castiel hates feeling like this around Dean, helpless and cared-for and childlike.

 _I’m his_ equal, Castiel thinks fiercely, _not another broken thing for him to look after—_

A soft noise different from the creaking pipes halts Castiel in his steps. Adrenaline, biting and hot as quicksilver, courses through him, and a strangely tingly feeling overtakes him, slicking his hands on the knife hilt. Human chemicals, clouding his judgment, slowing him down. His heartbeat storms in his ears, blocking the sound of the pipes.

Castiel checks over his shoulder and sees nothing there. When he turns forward, however, a blurred, dark flash of shadow makes his heart jolt sickeningly.

 _Oh, God,_ he thinks, afraid for the first time and suddenly wanting Dean by his side.

Castiel readjusts his moist fingers on the knife and raises it into a stabbing position, creeping forward as quietly as he can. Another soft noise beats from the silence, and Castiel freezes, heart in his throat.

“Ah,” says a dark voice behind him. “I was hoping I’d find the angel.”

Castiel whirls, knife whipping forward, but finds his arm caught in a bone-breaking grip. He gasps and the knife clatters to the floor, skidding away from him. Castiel looks up wildly, thinking, _so this is what panic must feel like,_ only to meet glowing blue eyes, bright as beacons in the dark, before everything goes dark.

 

 

 

 

\--

“Goddammit, that stupid sonofabitch,” Dean growls, checking down another hallway and cursing under his breath when he sees no sign of Cas. “The djinn knows we’re here by now, probably, and it’s all his fucking fault. He just can’t do what he’s told, can he? That’s his whole MO, fucking the system and stepping back to watch things go to shit—”

Sam swivels his flashlight down the dark hallway, patiently listening to Dean rant, before his eyes widen and his flashlight freezes.

“Dean,” he says, quietly.

Dean pauses mid-sentence, his stomach flipping a bit at the dread in Sam’s eyes and the controlled, clipped calm of his voice, before he turns and follows the path of his flashlight.

It rests on a small, familiar knife.

“Oh, fuck,” Dean whispers, and something akin to panic grips him nauseatingly tight. “Oh, God.”

He races forward despite Sam’s hissed, admonishing, “ _Dean!_ ” and picks up the knife, looks around, pointing his flashlight in what he knows are futile attempts at search.

“Cas!” he calls, his voice booming and echoing down the empty warehouse corridor, “ _Castiel!_ ”

“He took him, Dean,” Sam says, his voice taut with frustration and, if Dean didn't know better, panic. “And the two people were never here to begin with. This was a trap and we walked right into it. I should’ve gone with my gut instinct. No djinn would let itself be seen if it didn’t want it that way. _Fuck._ ”

“ _Cas!_ ” Dean yells again, even though he knows the warehouse is long empty, probably has been the entire half-hour they've been searching for Cas. “ _Cas!_ Goddammit, Sam, that bastard could’ve taken him _anywhere_.”

“I know. Just calm down, Dean, okay? We’ll find him.”

“No, we won’t!” Dean snaps, and he knows his voice is bordering on hysterical. “No, we fucking won’t! They could be anywhere in the country, and that fucker is gonna bleed him dry. I fucking told him he should stay home, I _knew_ he wasn’t ready for this, that--that sonofa _bitch_ —”

“Dean, calm down,” Sam consoles again, clamping a large hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Breathe, alright?”

“This is my fault,” Dean says in the same breath, and Sam closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Yeah it is, Sam, and we both know it. If I’d forced him to stay home, he wouldn’t be drugged up in the back of some djinn’s van somewhere headed to his death. Jesus, _Jesus.._ _._ ”

“Dean, you and I both know you couldn’t have forced Cas to do anything he didn’t want to. Okay? This isn’t your fault. Cas is the one who split up from us, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean says miserably, “and he’s a fucking idiot.”

“Just have hope, okay? I found you when I thought I wasn’t gonna, all those years back when we were up against the same thing. We’ll find Cas. Look at me, Dean. We’ll find him. Alright?”

Dean nods, but it’s to placate Sam. He feels strangely and utterly empty, like he’s mourning someone he hasn’t even lost yet.

“Let’s get to a motel first,” Sam says. “We’ll eat and look for leads. Right?”

Dean nods.

“You’re with me on this, right, Dean?”

Dean looks up to see Sam staring at him searchingly, earnest in a way he knows Dean needs him to be.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, right,” and he follows Sam back to the car.

 

 

 

 

\--

The first thing Castiel feels is drowsy contentment, and this strikes him as odd because he’s never experienced the sentiment before. Yet there’s no other way to describe it; he’s warm and strangely happy, curled up in something soft, and patterns of sunlight dance behind his eyelids. There’s an achingly familiar taste on his lips, almost like a scent—something like old leather and clean laundry.

For whatever reason, he doesn’t want to wake up. He wants to stay wrapped in the vices of thin cotton sheets and warm, breathing body forever, to curl up languidly and—

Warm, breathing body?

Castiel’s eyes crack open and he’s met with a dappled pattern of sun on an unfamiliar ceiling. And he can distinctly feel someone breathing next to him, deep and feather-soft. His legs are tangled inseparably in someone else’s, almost like he’d intended it to happen that way, and someone’s breath stirs his hair lightly.

Castiel, still groggy and disoriented, tips his head sideways and starts violently at what he sees.

It’s Dean, his eyes closed and his lashes fluttering gently. He and Castiel are so close that Castiel can see the distinct constellations of freckles smattered across Dean’s nose and shoulders, his lips slightly parted with his breath.

Castiel blinks, hard, waiting to wake up from whatever bizarre dream he’s having.

He doesn’t wake up, leaving only more panicked questions.

How did he get in here? Did he sleepwalk? Oh, God, Dean is going to kill him, or feel too uncomfortable to speak to him. This is way too weird for Dean, way too...gay, as he calls it.

 _I have to leave,_ Castiel thinks in a daze, _before he wakes up._

He moves to get quietly out of bed but finds the sheets twisted around him restrict his every moment, as well as the impossibly intertwined position of his legs around Dean’s.

_What the..._

Castiel twists sideways in a desperate bid for freedom and ends up pitching off the bed and to the floor with a loud thud, yanking the sheets with him. Dean gives an answering, irritated groan of protest, and Castiel scrambles to gather his bearings. _Where the hell are my clothes?!_ God, this is getting weirder by the second.

“Cas?” Dean asks in a sleepy mumble, and Castiel freezes and winces, still tangled in sheets and preparing for the worst.

Dean lolls his head over the side of the bed to peer down at Castiel and grins, his hair sticking up every which way and his eyes bright. “Little mishap there?”

“Dean,” Castiel begins, mortified, “let me just say I have no idea how—”

“—you ended up on the floor? Because I’m kinda wondering that too, Cas,” Dean says with another affectionate crook of his mouth. “God, you’re such a dork.”

Castiel frowns in perplexity. “No, um, how I got in here. I must have slept-walked, or—or been transported—”

Dean tilts his head, still smiling, and says, “What the fuck are you talking about, Cas?”

“Where are we?” Castiel asks, glancing around with rising fear as he takes in his unfamiliar surroundings; the huge white bed, the soft green walls, the faded wooden dresser and rocking chair. “Dean, something’s not right. We’ve been put under some sort of spell, or—”

“Cas,” Dean says, alarmed now, “are you all right? Chill out and come back to bed.”

Castiel stares at him, wide-eyed. “Come…back to bed?”

“You’re being weirder than usual this morning,” Dean says with a frown.

“I could say the same to you. Dean, _where are we?_ ”

“We’re in our apartment, moron.” Dean’s eyebrows are arched in concern now. “Cas, you okay?”

“I just…I don’t understand,” Castiel says, blankly. “This isn’t—we don’t…”

Dean waits for him to speak.

“We don’t have an apartment, Dean,” Castiel tries, wanting to say, _We don’t have a relationship like this, Dean. Whatever this is._

“I think you need more sleep, Cas. Did you hit your head or something?”

“I did not _hit my head._ ”

“Fine. How about if you shut up and come back to bed, I’ll make you breakfast.”

Castiel stares at Dean for a few long moments, his mouth hanging open speechlessly, while Dean gazes back with growing concern.

“Sure, Dean,” Castiel eventually replies. “I’ll, um, come back to bed.” Maybe Dean is sick, or fatally injured. Castiel realizes, in another moment of panic, that he doesn’t remember how he got here.

Dean smiles at him, more light-hearted and carefree than Castiel has ever seen him, and he feels his chest clench at the uncharacteristic bliss on Dean’s face.

Wrapping the sheets tightly around himself, Castiel crawls back into bed, watching Dean’s face closely as if waiting for him to snap.

Dean gazes back at him with a warmth that shocks him. “You always look like a kitten or something with your hair all fucked up like that.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Jesus, just lay down. You’re making me antsy.”

Castiel does as he’s told, facing Dean and still watching his every movement, waiting for him to break. For him to sit straight up and go, "What the fuck, Cas, what the everloving fuck," or something mildly Dean-like.

It doesn't happen.

“What, no cuddling?” Dean asks instead with a surprised look. “That’s new.”

“What is?”

“You’re, like, a cuddle-slut, Cas.”

“What does that even mean?” Castiel asks, appalled.

Dean just sighs and says, “Tell Sam I initiated this and I’ll kill you,” and pulls Castiel flush against him, tucking his chin over the top of Castiel’s head. Castiel goes rigid in astonishment, too paralyzed to respond. “I don’t want to ruin my reputation.”

Dean shifts, and Castiel realizes with a shock and a flash of strange heat that Dean’s clothes are missing too.

“Jeez, relax, Cas. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” Castiel says, his voice almost a squeak. “I’m, I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are,” Dean says suspiciously. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s just.” Castiel tries to tilt his head back, and Dean pulls back to stare down at him in bewilderment. “I don’t…understand. We aren’t like this. This isn’t our relationship. You would never…it would never…be like this.”

“What are you talking about?” Dean asks, his brows knitting together.

Castiel stares at him. “Dean, you hate cuddling and you can barely stand me half the time. Not to mention, you…you like _women_. Forgive me but none of this, _none_ of this is making sense.”

Dean frowns. “Cas, we’ve been together six months. Don’t you think it’s a little late in the game to be making these kind of assessments?”

_Six months._

Had Castiel fallen into a coma and not realized it? He’s fairly sure he would remember if he and Dean had been romantically together for six months. He wonders for a moment if Gabriel has something to do with this—it seems the only likely scenario—but he knows as well as anyone that his brother is dead for good.

“Cas,” Dean says, anxiously, “you’re scaring me.”

Castiel looks up and sees Dean’s eyes are soft and wide with confusion and concern. He must be deluded, Castiel thinks, or brainwashed.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Castiel says, and tucks his head back into Dean’s chest with lack of something better to do. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so. How’d I end up with someone as weird as you?” Dean asks, and the fondness in his voice is shocking to Castiel. Even more so when Dean presses a kiss to the crown of his head. “Go back to sleep for a bit, okay?”

Castiel closes his eyes, hoping that when he wakes up, things will be back to normal, and obeys.

 

 

 

 

\--

Things aren’t. Back to normal, that is, when Castiel wakes up. He’s still curled up against Dean’s chest, and Dean is tracing runes on his back, his touch light and skimming.

“Feeling better?” Dean asks, grinning down at him, and Castiel knows that from this moment on, he has to go with this or things are only going to get more confused and chaotic. He has to indulge this delusional Dean.

Castiel looks up, smiles, and nods.

“Good,” Dean says, and presses his lips to Castiel’s.

Castiel is frozen, stunned, for an entire three seconds before he yanks back and scrambles away, his heart pounding wildly, his cheeks on fire and his mouth tingling.

“Dude,” Dean complains, sitting up, “I thought you said you were okay.”

Castiel shakes his head, heart hammering. No, _no._ This is something he refuses to do. He won’t take advantage of Dean like this, not when he’s so out of his right mind. This is something _wrong._

Dean looks worried again; his teeth are digging into his lower lip and he’s staring at Castiel worriedly. “Cas, man, what’s the matter with you? You’re really freaking me out.”

“You kissed me,” Castiel says, his tone more accusatory than he’d hoped for.

“ _Yeah,_ ” Dean says, eyes widening, “duh. Is this news to you or something?”

“ _Yes,_ as a matter of fact, it _is_.”

Dean stares at him for a good long moment, and then he says, “Alright. I’m gonna go make breakfast and give you some time to go back to normal, okay? Please don’t be weird by the time I get back.” He slides unabashedly out of bed and Castiel averts his eyes, his face flushing again. _What the hell is happening to me?_ he wonders again as Dean leaves the room, and collapses face-down on the pillow.

Castiel is going crazy, he knows it. And he actually knows, from experience, what going crazy feels like. This is just a touch more interesting and…homoerotic.

There are two options, he concludes. One, someone is playing a horrible joke and he and Dean are the victims of it, only Dean is entirely unaware and just Castiel knows the truth of their relationship.

Or two: this is, somehow, some way, reality, and Castiel is the one behind on the jump.

Impossible, Castiel thinks. There’s no possible way that Dean would ever be in love with him, for a multitude of reasons. One being that Dean Winchester is very much heterosexual. To his knowledge, at least.

The best thing he can do, Castiel knows, is go along with it or else risk alienating Dean. The last thing he wants to do is hurt him, and Castiel knows the nature of human romantic relationships is fragile at best, especially with someone like Dean.

A nagging, traitorous thought reminds Castiel that this could very well be reality. It _feels_ like reality; Castiel has dreamed before in his time as a human, and no dream he’s ever experienced as been as vivid and solid as this. He feels just the same as he always does, other than the fact that he’s curled up naked in Dean Winchester’s bed.

The smell of eggs cooking makes Castiel’s stomach gurgle, and he reluctantly rolls out of bed and throws random clothes on that probably aren’t his. He wonders if this is how is life is every morning in this world; waking up beside Dean, laying and talking with him, making breakfast. It all seems too…utopian.

Too good to be true.

Castiel banishes the thought to the back of his mind. A romantic relationship with Dean isn’t _good._  It’s dangerous and probably harmful and potentially ruinous to their friendship. But he can’t deny, can’t even _try_ to deny, the warmth he remembers waking up, or the feeling of Dean’s lips on his. It isn’t something he ever knew he wanted. But now that he has it, God, he does.

Maybe he doesn’t even realize how much.

“Hey,” Dean says with a bright grin upon seeing Castiel. He’d thrown on clothes, so Castiel supposes there are small mercies. “I’m making eggs.”

“I see that,” Castiel says carefully, crossing the black-and-white tile floor to sit at the worn kitchen table.

“Sunny side-up, your favorite,” Dean continues. He’s like a new man, Castiel thinks in amazement. Never has he seen Dean this blissful, this _purely happy._ In this world, Castiel realizes with a sick jolt, that happiness is directly correlated to _him._

All the more reason this universe can’t possibly exist.

“You feelin’ normal yet?” Dean asks, scooping the eggs off the pan with a spatula and plopping them onto two plates.

“Yes,” Castiel lies. “I don’t know what that was in there. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, we all have our weird days. Sammy still gets kinda funky on Tuesdays every once in a while.”

Dean turns and sets down the plates on the table.

“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel says.

“You’re polite today,” Dean says in surprise. “You’re usually a grumpy little bitch in the mornings.”

“Am I?” Castiel asks, filing that away for later notice.

“Yeah, you are,” Dean teases, swaggering a bit closer and staring at Castiel in a way that makes him both intensely uncomfortable and anticipatory.

“Well, I’ll try to alter that in the future,” Castiel says, trying to mask the nervousness in his voice.

Dean laughs. “God, Cas, you’re such a fucking tease.” He fists his hand in Castiel’s shirt, tilts his head down, and kisses him again. This time, Castiel is ready for it.

It feels nothing like his kiss with Meg, a clash of teeth and fire with a tang of sulfur. No, this is something that makes a trembling heat unfurl in Castiel’s chest, makes his toes curl without explanation. It’s sweet, chaste, with just a slight nip at Castiel’s lower lip in teasing. It’s absolutely addictive, and Castiel finds that his hands curl up to cradle Dean’s skull without warning, an instinctive, tender movement that leaves his head spinning in want and confusion.

Castiel’s gasping when Dean pulls away, which causes Dean to raise an eyebrow.

“Look who’s all hot and bothered this morning,” Dean says with a snort, and Castiel just stares at him dazedly and knows he’ll never be able to un-feel what Dean had so casually just given him. This memory, in a sunny, bright kitchen that may or may not belong to them, will haunt Castiel forever.

“Yeah,” Castiel says weakly, clearing his throat. “I guess so.”

 

 

 

 

\--

 

“Dean, would you stop pacing and just sit down? You’re making me antsy,” Sam says from his perch on the cheap motel bed across from Dean’s.

Dean does as he’s told, his knee jiggling. “Any updates?”

“It looks like another girl went missing in Carroll, Iowa,” Sam says, and at Dean’s hopeful expression adds, “It could be a deliberate mislead, though. He’s maybe trying to throw us off.”

“It’s already been a _day,_ ” Dean says angrily, and he knows Sam knows the bite in his voice is nerves. “How long did I last?”

“Three,” Sam says, quietly, “maybe four.”

“Fuck.”

“Dean—”

“No, Sam, you don’t understand. I _can’t_ let him die like this, not after everything he’s been through for us. It’s not fucking fair for him to spend his last days in some Barbie Dreamhouse only to get bled dry like a--like a freaking prune. I won’t let that happen to him.”

“Dean,” Sam says, in his quiet, “caring” voice. “I’m not giving up hope yet, and neither should you, but you should resign yourself to the fact that there may be nothing we can do at this point. Sometimes there’s just nothing _to_ be done.”

“I don’t believe in no-win scenarios,” Dean says, snappishly.

“Alright, Kirk, just...dial it back a notch, would you? I didn’t say I was giving up, I’m just trying to—”

“I know, Sam, alright? I know, just." Dean sighs, buries his face in his hands. "Please just keep looking.”

Sam purses his lips and stares at him reproachfully for another few moments before turning back to his computer.

Dean tries futilely to look up information on his phone—his laptop had been a goner ever since some asshole leprechaun had decided to steal Dean’s belongings in an act of karmic retribution—while Sam types and clatters away.

Sam’s phone goes off about an hour later—some obscure Linkin Park song or something, which earns him a look of disapproval—and he glances at the caller ID before he looks significantly at Dean and answers.

“Garth? Yeah, hey.”

Dean sits up straight, abandoning his phone.

“We think we got a lead in Carroll, Iowa,” Sam says, and he listens to Garth babble for a few minutes before his eyes widen a bit then narrow. “That’s what I thought. Well, keep your posts on the lookout and keep us updated with more info, okay? We’re headed that way right now.”

Garth says a quick farewell and Sam hangs up.

“Well?” Dean asks.

“We were right. The lead in Carroll is probably a trap. Garth’s got a few eyes in different parts of the country with repetitive djinn activity—”

“ _Repetitive djinn activity?_ ” Dean asks, incredulously. “Seriously?”

Sam ignores him and continues, “And it looks like one of Garth’s guys spotted someone with a van heading into another warehouse in a suburb of Chicago.”

“That could be anyone.”

“Yeah, it could, but the warehouse has been used by djinn before,” Sam says. “Djinn don’t travel in packs but they keep their allies close.”

“That’s stupid,” Dean counters. “If other djinn have used it before, that’s the first place people will look.”

“Is it?” Sam asks, pursing his lips. “Or is it kind of like hiding in plain sight?”

Dean maintains a skeptical silence.

“Come on, Dean, Garth is good and you know it. This is the best lead we got.”

“What if the lead in Carroll turns out to be right? Then we’ll have wasted all of our time in the wrong direction!”

“How about we split up? You take the Impala and head to Chicago and I’ll find a rental and check out Carroll.”

“So not only go at this bastard alone, but run the risk of throwing you into a trap?” Dean shakes his head. “No way, Sammy. We’re staying together.”

“Dean,” Sam says, exasperated. “It’s the only way to be sure and you know it. I’m a strong hunter and so are you, and _Cas_ is at risk here. I can handle it, alright? And I’ll be extra careful in the knowledge that it might be a trap.”

Dean stares at the carpet, picking at a string on his jeans uneasily.

“Come on, Dean. You know it’s the best plan we have.”

Dean nods and closes his eyes. “Just promise me you’ll be careful, okay? I can’t lose the both of you.”

Sam flattens his lips into a thin, sympathetic line and gives Dean’s shoulder a clap of encouragement.

“I’ll see you in a few days, Dean,” he says, shouldering his bag and heading for the door. He adds then, optimistically, “ _With_ Cas.”

Dean tries to smile but fails; he feels the forced expression slip the moment Sam closes the door behind him, and Dean drops his head into his hands.

He’s tried not to consider what it’ll do to him if he loses Cas again, the stupid asshole, even though he knows Sam has and is already looking at him with the same, soft anxiety he had when Dean lost Cas the first time around. Or the second, or third, or whatever time it’d been--the bleak months after Cas had walked into the lake with black goo streaming from his eyes and mouth and left Dean alone with a wet, bloody trenchcoat on the shoreline.

 _No,_ Dean thinks viciously, not quite realizing he’s praying. _I’ll find you, Cas. You’re not dying on me. Not this time._

 

 

 

 

\--

 

Castiel, despite his uncertainty about the whole scenario (and his nervous refusals to indulge Dean in his er, more whimsical urges), is possibly the happiest he’s been since he went mortal. It’s a human happiness; not the celestial sort of euphoria he’d felt when his Father had created the sun and stars (he and his siblings sang for months and years), nor the joyous reverence he felt stirring inside him every time he stumbled across one of his Father’s creations that was particularly beautiful. No, this is happiness for the sake of being happy, so in that way, it’s the first happiness Castiel has ever known. He finds it both startling and unsurprising that the only factor required for this sort of sentiment is Dean Winchester’s affection.

If someone had asked him centuries ago what his vision of happiness was, he probably wouldn’t have even had an answer, outside the love and loyalty of his Father.

Never would have he imagined his utopia as a curled-up lounge on the couch with Dean Winchester, watching the _Lord of the Rings_ movies from start to finish with a beer and a bowl of old popcorn.

“You have a favorite character yet, Cas?” Dean asks, his breath tickling Castiel’s ear as his fingers plumb softly through his hair. _You’re like a cat,_ Dean had teased him earlier, _purring and preening under the attention,_ and Castiel hadn't even tried to deny it.

“Mmm,” Castiel says sleepily. “I like Samwise Gamgee.”

He feels Dean smile. “Sam’s my favorite too.”

“Does the name bear bias?”

“Nah. Sam’s everyone’s favorite character.”

“I like him because he’s the unsung hero,” Castiel says contemplatively, watching as Sam hauls Frodo up Mount Doom. “He never expects or gets any credit, yet because of him, the world is saved.”

Dean laughs. “I think that’s why most people like him.”

What Castiel doesn’t say is that Sam reminds him of another unsung hero, curled up under him nursing a Fat Tire beer and a tired soul. He doesn’t think he has to, anyway.

 

 

 

 

\--

 

Dean seems to respect Castiel’s (apparently sudden) skittishness around sex and doesn’t make any more offers that night, just strips to his boxers, plops into bed and holds out the covers for Castiel to join.

Castiel follows suit and slides in, feeling horribly accustomed to the feeling of Dean’s heartbeat against his ear, the soft fleeting stroke of his fingers, the smell of his shampoo. It’s like he can’t help himself; he’s fallen more than he could’ve imagined, and he can’t seem to dig himself back out. The apocalypse could come knocking at their front doorstep and Castiel knows with a creeping certainty that he wouldn’t leave his tangled position by Dean’s side.

Dean hums some song to Castiel—he thinks he recognizes it as a Beatles melody—and Castiel drifts. Before he fades out, he hears Dean murmur, “Love you, Cas.”

A sudden, nightmarish image flashes behind Castiel’s eyes, lurching reality to a standstill—Castiel jerks up and cries out, clutching his head as he pieces together the brief image. He’s in pain, sick, _exhausted_ , and he’s in a warehouse of some sort—

“Cas?” Dean is demanding, shaking his shoulder, his voice gruff with worry. “ _Cas!_ ”

“I’m—sorry,” Castiel pants, his heart thudding sickeningly in his ears. “It’s—just a migraine.”

“Sure as hell didn’t look like it.” Dean sounds badly shaken, and when Castiel looks over, his eyes are wide, face nearly ashen in the moonlight lancing through the blinds.

“It’s fine,” Castiel says, knowing that it’s not. He’d seen something, something undeniably important, something Dean’s words had triggered. He strains, aches to remember, but comes up infuriatingly blank.

“Yeah, well. Just lay down, okay? If it happens again I’m taking you to the hospital. Seriously, Cas, that looked like a seizure or something.” Dean’s voice trails to a whisper. “God, you’re scaring the hell out of me lately.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Castiel says, although his stomach is still twisting uneasily and he knows he won’t sleep well tonight. “Just…stay with me, please.” It’s something he’d never usually say, but he has a sinking feeling it’ll be one of his last chances to say it. _Nothing gold can stay,_ he recalls with a soft pang.

“Yeah, okay. C’mere.” Dean gently tugs Castiel down next to him and enfolds him in his arms, and for a moment, Castiel feels like a child, even though he never experienced childhood in a human understanding. There’s something warm and impervious and secure between them, echoed in their entwined positions, and Castiel falls into a shallow, dreamless sleep.

 

 

 

 

\--

 

Dean has a lot of time to think on the road to Chicago, and he spends 95% of it fretting. Mostly, he’s preoccupied with Sam by himself out in Carroll, and Cas, who could very well be dead by now.

All Dean can think about is how his last exchange with Cas had been the two of them bitching at each other over what seems like petty nonsense now.

 _What if that’s the last time I ever talked to him?_ Dean thinks with a sick twist. _After all the shit we’ve been through, we ended it on some stupid fight._

No, not _ended._ Cas isn’t gone, not yet. He can’t be.

Dean thinks about Cas strung up somewhere, passed out cold with a needle in his neck and slowly wasting away, and feels so nauseous that he almost tears up.

Dean’s phone rings and he checks it, grateful for the distraction. It’s Sam.

He picks up instantly. “You okay?”

“Yeah, man, totally fine. We were right, Carroll was a set-up. I checked all the warehouses in the place, which was a total of like three, given it’s rural Iowa. You in Chicago yet?”

“Nah, still about two hours out.”

“Alright. I’m headed to you.”

“Be careful,” Dean stresses, and he practically hears Sam’s bitchy eye-roll through the phone before he hangs up.

Well, at least Sam’s safe, Dean thinks. As if he needs more space in his head to worry about Cas. _Dumb ex-angelic bastard._ If he makes it out of this alive, Dean’s gonna tear him a new one.

He turns up Zeppelin’s _IV_ loud enough to drone out the static in his head and continues into the night until he reaches a shitty Chicago motel and collapses into bed, eyes dry and scratchy with exhaustion.

For a moment before he fades out, he thinks he feels a quiet presence beside him, a soft heartbeat in the dark, but when he opens his eyes, no one’s there.

 

 

 

 

\--

 

Castiel wakes up the next morning half-expecting to be somewhere else, but no—he meets Dean’s eyes, almost bottle-green in the light, and Dean murmurs with a soft smile, “Go back to sleep, Cas,” and he does. When Castiel wakes up again, Dean’s gone making breakfast. He can hear the quiet hiss of bacon frying from the kitchen, and Dean softly singing the Allman Brothers to himself.

It’s exactly the same as it was yesterday, yet Castiel would gladly wake up this way everyday and never grow tired of its quotidian intimacy, its eternal reassurance of contentment.

Castiel rolls over and pads into the kitchen, yawning, and Dean looks up with a smile.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says with a croon to his voice, and Castiel rolls his eyes. “I made you bacon. Eat up.”

“Thanks, Dean.” He moves closer to examine the food, and Dean grins and presses a kiss to his temple before slapping his lower back.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he says, then pauses and waggles his eyebrows. “Unless you want to join me, that is.”

“ _No,_ ” Castiel says quickly and a little too sharply, more out of shock and discomfort than an actual desire not to.

Dean doesn’t seem swayed though, just a bit surprised, and he shrugs. “Suit yourself. Jeez, you’re a prude lately.” And he lopes off.

Castiel picks at his bacon as he listens to the shower gurgle on from the other room. If this really is his life now…isn’t it his right to say yes to things like that? Isn’t he entitled to them, if he and Dean are in a relationship as Dean says they are?

But what if it isn’t, Castiel thinks with creeping dread, if it isn’t truly his life? If this really _is_ a hallucination and Castiel and Dean come to as they were before, he can’t imagine how excruciatingly strained their relationship will be with the lingering memories of what had happened in this dream-world.

Castiel tips his head back with a soft groan and wishes he’d be selfish and depraved for once. He knows he could never live with feeling he’d violated Dean, though, not in any universe; with a weary sigh of resignation, Castiel realizes he loves Dean too much for that.

He places his empty plate in the sink and listens with fondness to Dean belt out some eighties song in to the beat of the shower water. With a deep sigh, he heads to the living room, plops down on the sofa, and turns on the History Channel, idly watching something on the topic of Islamic mythology.

The shower stops after a few moments, and Castiel closes his eyes and tilts his head into the golden slat of sunlight through the living room window. He could lay here forever; he feels strangely exhausted and sluggish today, like he’s being drained of energy.

“Cas,” Dean says from the doorway of the living room, and Castiel turns to reply, “Dean,” but his words get stuck upon seeing Dean clad in solely a towel in the doorway. Dean raises his eyebrows, droplets sliding down the bridge of his nose as he shakes out his hair, and something as hot and dry as desert sand fills the cavity of Castiel’s throat. The sensation is almost as warm as the blood creeping up to color his cheeks.

“Dean,” Castiel says, quickly, “I—”

Dean ignores Castiel’s discomfort, moving forward until he’s standing directly in front of Castiel with a smirk that promises nothing beneficial. Castiel just gazes up at him, too stuck for words.

“Since when has this made you uncomfortable?” Dean asks with another arched eyebrow, gesturing to his body. “You’re blushing like a virgin bride on her wedding night.”

“I,” Castiel tries valiantly again, but loses all train of thought when Dean sinks forward to straddle his lap. Heat spikes all over his body, spiraling downward. “Dean, no, I _can’t_ —”

“And why can’t you?” Dean whispers with an edge of frustration, and Castiel doesn’t have a thing to say. Dean takes this as a surrender and surges forward to capture Castiel’s mouth with his, grinding forward more slowly as Castiel seizes up with a strangled noise and then goes boneless.

The kiss is more fierce and heated than anything they’ve shared before, and Castiel is torn wildly between desperate, blind desire and a screaming instinct to push Dean off before it goes too far.

“Dean,” Castiel says when Dean frees his mouth to tongue at his jawline, but the word escapes as a whimper and Dean laughs, his mouth gliding to Castiel’s neck. “Dean, I can’t—”

“And why the fuck can’t you?” Dean growls, nipping his neck, and Castiel gasps against his will. “We both want this, and you know it. You’re all systems go, anyway.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

Dean sinks down with deliberate force, and Castiel bucks up against him with a choked gasp.

“See?” Dean says with a soft, almost tender smile.

“No, goddammit, Dean—” And he pushes him off, his blood roaring in his ears, beating a papery tattoo against his skin.

Dean stares at him, unable to conceal his confusion and hurt. “What the hell, Cas?”

“I just—I can’t risk—”

The room falls quiet. The only sounds in the room are Castiel’s thundering heartbeat, the ticking of the old clock, and the History Channel droning in the background.

“ _One significant mythological figure in Islamic lore is that of the jinn, also known as a genie. These creatures were said to transcend dimensions and in later adaptations, to grant wishes to people who were valiant enough to approach them…_ ”

“Oh, God,” Castiel whispers, feeling sick. “Oh, _God._ ”

“Cas?”

He remembers it all now in a rush of sound and color, every god-forsaken second of it. Fighting with Dean, _his_ Dean, charging off stupidly to fight the djinn on his own. Heading down the corridor, whirling to fight, things going black. Snatches of reality tied up in a warehouse, being bled dry off his own disillusioned fantasy.

“You’re not real,” Castiel says with an ache that threatens to consume his whole being. “None of this is.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Cas?” Dean asks, sounding panicked.

“None of this is real. This apartment, our relationship, you. It’s all a part of my sick dream.” The world feels like it’s crashing around him, leaving Castiel the center of shattering gravity at the center. It leaves him numb all over, his chest cold and barren as a tundra.

“Cas,” Dean begs, gripping the towel with one hand and cupping Castiel’s face with the other. “Listen to me. _I’m real._ _This_ is real. Do you feel me? Feel my hand? This is _real._ ”

Castiel stares at Dean, and it looks so much like his Dean that his throat closes painfully. “No. You’re not him. I...I’m sorry.”

Dean’s hand slips from his face and he stares at Castiel blankly for a second before he shuffles a hand through his still damp hair and says, quietly, “Do you want to talk about this, Cas?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Castiel whispers.

“Maybe I would. I know you better than anyone.” His face is open like a broken vein, pleading. “Talk to me, _please._ ”

“Dean,” Castiel says, slowly as bits and pieces of information on djinn come trickling back to him. “If you truly trust me, I need you to do something for me and not ask questions.”

“Anything, Cas,” Dean says with a guileless earnesty that makes Castiel’s heart seize a bit. “What do you need?”

 _You,_ Castiel thinks, sadly, but this isn’t what he says.

He asks Dean about a warehouse in Chicago, Illinois.

 

 

 

 

\--

 

Dean checks the address again and grimaces as he scopes out the tall, gnarled chain fence in front of him. A soft, cold mist has fallen almost like snow, making the barbed metal slick and impossible to climb. He sighs impatiently and sets to digging at the lock, cursing every time it slips his fingers, and feels his mouth flick in a brief smile when the lock snaps. He slips through the thin crack in the fence and heads toward the dark warehouse, thinking, _Cas, if you can hear me, I’m coming._

It would be stupid to enter through the back of the place, suicidal to enter through the front, but it’s not like he has a choice if he wants to get in. _Basement window,_ Dean thinks suddenly, but wonders if it’ll even matter, in the end. There’s a good chance the djinn already knows he’s here.

 _Let him come,_ he thinks with a vicious stab of fury. There’s something about the mental image of Cas strung up six ways from Sunday in a coma that evokes that sort of reaction, he supposes.

He tightens his grip on the knife and heads off the main path down into the long, weedy grass that crawls up against the walls of the warehouse. The place is huge, Dean realizes with trepidation, bigger than he'd thought, and Cas (and the other victims) could be anywhere in the building. He angles toward the bottom-right flank of the building, grimacing at the foot of mud squishing underneath his feet.

He sticks to the outside wall as closely as possible, glancing through the dim, mildewed windows in vain to see if he can catch a glimpse of anything beyond them, but to no avail. He curses, and moves on.

It’s not often that Dean Winchester strikes lucky, but maybe the angels are smiling down on him today or something because he finds a window that’s already busted open about five minutes after further search. Dean takes a moment to thank whatever heavenly forces actually give a shit about his life and lowers his legs through the square gap, wincing at the tight scrape against his thighs and waist, before he drops a good five feet to the ground and crouches there. His heart thuds. His fingers twitch around the knife. Nothing appears, and nothing sounds out except the low humming whine of an overhead light about to flicker out.

Dean moves quietly forward, peeking through the long hallways of shelves and boxes and finding nothing.

 _Open space,_ Dean remembers. _He needs room to feed._

Dean quickens his pace, something itching horribly under his skin. The knowledge that he’s so close to Cas and that he might be too late is a physical barb in his chest.

After a few more moments, Dean reaches the end of the shelf-rows and hooks right into a thin corridor he hopes will lead him to the heart of the warehouse, maybe the atrium where all the boxes get unloaded. It would be drafty and open and easy to see incoming prey; just as a djinn would like it.

The hallway opens up into a large, dimly lit space, it looks like, and Dean ducks behind a row of boxes, his pulse a frantic gallop in his veins. He takes a deep breath and peeks around the edge of the furthest box.

The djinn is nowhere to be found, but three people are tied up by their wrists and hanging, their toes barely brushing the ground. One of them, Dean realizes with a spasm of relief and horror, is Cas.

His head is hung, his hair unkempt and shaggy, and his skin looks ghostly pale in the fluorescent light. He’s been stripped of his shirt, as have the two other unconscious girls, probably to give the djinn better access to veins across his body.

“Cas,” he whispers and goes to him, feeling some of the blood drain from his face when a closer inspection reveals that Cas is worse than he’d initially appeared—much worse. There are soft, swelling bruises all over his body and an IV is hooked up to his neck. His eyes are half-lidded and glazed, his lips and eyelids bluish. He looks like a fucking corpse.

“Cas,” Dean says again in a soft plea, and yanks the IV from his neck. This evokes no visible response; in a moment of panic, Dean presses two fingers under Cas’ jaw to feel for a pulse. For one dead, heart-stopping moment, he feels none— _no, no, no_ —until he presses down in desperation and finds a feathery pulse pumping sluggishly under his touch. He’s an hour away from dead, if not less.

“Hang on, buddy, we’re gonna get you out of here,” Dean whispers, reaching up to saw at the ropes where they’re tightly (and painfully) chafing Cas’ wrists.

Dean feels rather than sees or hears the presence in the room, and before he can even turn with the knife raised, he hears a dark, electric voice purr in his ear, “Dean Winchester.”

He tries to turn but finds himself thrown with immeasurable force into a nearby pile of boxes, his elbow breaking his crash painfully. He wheezes and scrambles to get upright, but the djinn in a blink of time has Dean pinned to the cold metal wall, his thick, clawed fingers like a choke collar around his throat.

Dean thrashes and glares at the djinn with pure hatred, taking in the familiar inked swirling runes across the planes of his face and his dark, sinister eyes.

“Ahh,” the djinn says with a slow, predatory smile. “Tell me, Dean.” His eyes beam blue and lantern bright in the dark. “Do you ever wonder what angels dream of?”

 

\--

 

The ride to Chicago is mostly silent, with Castiel clasping and unclasping his hands anxiously and Dean maintaining a brooding silence.

“How’d you know it was in Chicago?” Dean asks once to crack the quiet between them.

“I remember,” Castiel says simply. “Just flashes. Road signs, city markings that I caught in and out of consciousness. I’m sure of it.”

“Does this mean you’re leaving?” Dean asks sometime later.

“I don’t know,” Castiel replies, but he and Dean both hear the pained answer in that response. Castiel watches Dean’s jaw clench quickly like it does when he’s been hurt and doesn’t know how to respond.

“Okay,” Dean whispers, and Castiel notices his knuckles are bone-white on the steering wheel.

“I don’t want to, Dean,” Castiel says just as quietly. “I don’t want to, God knows I don’t. But I have to.”

“Why?” Dean demands, his hurt sparking his temper.

“Because this world isn’t right for me.”

Dean glances at him sideways in what looks to be a moment of terror. “Jesus, Cas…you’re not gonna…you wouldn’t—”

“Kill myself?” Castiel asks, and Dean’s Adam’s apple bobs almost convulsively. “No, Dean, that’s not what I mean.”

Dean puffs out a sigh of quiet relief even as Castiel traces the shape of the prepared knife in his pocket with an emptiness in his heart and a lump in his throat.

 

\--

 

Castiel dozes in and out on the ride to Chicago, wishing each time he wakes that he’s back in his imaginary apartment in an imaginary bubble of unattainable domesticity. Dean doesn’t ask him any more questions, although he clearly wants to. Dean knows plenty about djinn; it’s actually from reading Chuck’s books that Castiel knows to do any of this at all, to find the warehouse for the source of the djinn and to kill himself to wake up. He only has a matter of hours left, he knows, before the djinn leeches him of whatever life energy he has left. Just the happiness from being in Dean’s presence in the Impala should suffice for the djinn’s appetite, which Castiel finds somewhat tragic.

He remembers the fight with Dean before he left, the ridiculous tantrum he’d pitched before the hunt and the cold shoulder squabble all the way up to Sioux City, and wishes more than anything he could see Dean, _his_ Dean, a final time. He knows even if he surfaces from the dream that there’s a good chance the djinn will kill him right off; after all, he has no backup and will have the strength of practically a walking corpse to defend himself against something he couldn’t beat even with his full (albeit mortal) strength the first time around.

Castiel and Dean drive in a silence that’s strangely comfortable, a testament to their relationship, and strangely intimate, as though silently sharing words for a final time. Dean, as they near Chicago, keeps shooting Castiel stricken, heartbroken looks, and it takes all of Castiel’s willpower not to demand that Dean turn the car around, so he can spend his final days with Dean in contentment, warmth, peace. If there were any way he’d want to die, that would be it. But he knows if there’s the slightest chance he can see the real Dean again, he’ll take it. His old friend always seems to inspire that kind of riskiness in him.

 _Which would you rather have?_ he asks himself, closing his eyes. _Peace? Or freedom?_

He, of course, knows his answer.

 

\--

 

Dean can’t breathe. Not that that’s really anything new—occupational hazard, he supposes—but it _is_ intensely uncomfortable, his throat practically crushed in an iron grasp and his circulation slowly cutting off from lack of oxygen.

 _This is it,_ he manages to think through the black rags inking his vision. _This is how I die._

“I could _show_ you what angels dream of,” the djinn continues in that wheedling voice. Dean barely hears him through the fog descending over him. “I think you might be surprised.”

Dean aims a weak kick for the djinn’s balls, but either he’s junkless or has nuts of steel because it has no effect on him whatsoever.

The djinn leans in close so Dean can taste his cloying, rancid breath, like a drug in itself. “The angel dreams vividly, Dean Winchester. What do you think he dreams of?”

“ _Gossip Girl_ reruns,” Dean spits, the words garbled from the iron grip around his throat.

“No, Dean. His dreams, all his dreams, are all to do with—”

Suddenly the grip on Dean’s throat slackens completely and the djinn releases an inhuman wail, rearing back and clawing in disbelief at the knife protruding from his chest. Dean slumps to the ground and wheezes wretchedly, trying to fill his lungs again, and the djinn collapses with a heavy thud.

Dean looks up, dazed, and sees Sam towering over him, chest heaving, hair askew.

“About time,” Dean groans in favor of wording the sharp swell of gratitude in his chest.

“Cas,” Sam says urgently, and helps Dean to his feet.

“He’s almost dead, Sam,” Dean says, trying not to sound too panicked as Sam rushes over to check Cas’ pulse.

“Dean, get him down from here,” Sam instructs, his voice cool and business-like as it always is when things go to shit. “I’m checking the other vics. If Cas is barely alive, I doubt they are.”

“I got you, Cas,” Dean murmurs, more to himself than anyone, as Sam moves away, and he withdraws a pocket knife and saws at the ropes shackling Cas' bruised wrists. “I got you.”

The ropes snap free and Cas slumps lifelessly into Dean’s arms, deadweight and as cold as a corpse. Dean lowers him gently to the ground, thoughtlessly sweeping the hair out of his face as he waits for Sam’s verdict.

“We’re too late for one,” Sam says grimly, “but the other’s in the same state as Cas.” He cuts her ropes and lowers her to the ground beside Cas.

“What can we do?” Dean asks, gnawing on his knuckle and finding himself unable to look away from Cas’ lifeless, papery eyelids, his dry, blue-tinged lips.

“The djinn’s dead and the IV’s out of him,” Sam says in a quiet, methodical voice. “Cas’ll have to fight the remaining poison in his system. There’s nothing we can do for him at this point, Dean. It’s up to him.”

Dean Winchester is not a man of faith; he’s not a God-loving or God-fearing man. But God does know, he bows his head and prays.

 

\--

 

“Where am I?” Castiel asks in growing frustration as he looks wildly around the warehouse room. “My body, I mean. I _know_ I should be in here, along with his other victims. I know it.”

“Cas, did you ever think that maybe—” Dean begins quietly, and Castiel whirls on him.

“This isn’t _real,_ ” he says in a growl. “It can’t be. So don’t try to convince me otherwise.”

Dean puts up his hands in surrender. “Cas, I know a thing or two about djinn, alright? Remember? I haven’t heard any reports lately that one might be here. I came all the way out here mainly to indulge you, because I'm worried about you, but I think it’s best we went home.”

“Dean, _I’m_ in here. Do you understand? I have to wake up or I’m going to die.”

“You’re going to die out there anyway,” Dean says quietly, and Castiel freezes at the admission.

“What?”

He turns slowly to face Dean again and sees that Dean has moved a few steps closer to him, hands jammed in his pockets and slivers of tears in his eyes.

“Cas,” he whispers, and it doesn’t quite feel like Dean anymore, not really, if it ever did. “Why couldn’t you just let yourself be happy for once?”

“What?” Castiel asks again, goosebumps pebbling his arms.

“Even in your own dream, you couldn’t allow yourself to have what you want. Are you really that determined to make yourself miserable?”

Castiel shakes his head sadly. “I don’t deserve you, Dean,” he whispers. “Not in any universe. Not even in my dreams.”

“Cas,” fake-Dean says in an anguished voice, stepping forward again. “We _worked._ We were happy together. Why couldn’t you at least let yourself be happy with me just for a few days?”

“I was, Dean,” Castiel confesses. “The happiest I’ve ever been.”

“Then come home with me,” Dean says, his tears spilling over. “We can stay together. Isn’t that what we both want?”

“If I come home with you, the djinn will kill me. Don’t you get it?”

“The djinn is going to kill you anyway,” Dean says. “In here, it won’t feel like hours or days, it’ll feel like _years_ , Cas. You can spend the rest of your life with me.”

Castiel stares at him, unbelievably tempted to just throw down the knife, take Dean’s hand, go back to their apartment and curl up with Dean until his life slips away from him in a seamless dream. It’ll no doubt be less painful than whatever death is awaiting him in the real world.

But.

“I can’t,” Castiel whispers, feeling unfamiliar tears well up and sting behind his eyes. “I’m sorry. If there’s any chance, any chance at all, that I can see Dean again and make amends, I have to take it. It’s the only thing I have left to fight for.”

“Cas,” Dean says, his voice razor-sharp in his panic, “you’re going to _kill yourself._ Do you realize that?”

“I’ll wake up.”

“What if you don’t?” Dean shouts, and Castiel can see the true desperation in his eyes, the almost-believable panic in his shaking hands.

Castiel pulls out the blood-encrusted knife from his pocket and Dean makes a strangled, horrified noise in his throat.

Castiel stares down at the knife for a moment before he steps forward so he and Dean are almost brushing arms, and gazes up at him.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says, his voice rough and soft. “And I will love you until my dying day. But this is not meant to be.” He knows it’s indulgent and pointless, but he leans up to press a final, chaste kiss to Dean’s lips, wanting to commit the taste and feeling to memory. Soon, he knows, memory will be all he has.

“No, Cas, please don’t,” Dean begs, and then chokes out, “ _Cas!_ ” as, without preamble, Castiel lifts the blade and stabs himself in the heart.

 

\--

 

“ _Cas_!”

It’s Dean’s voice—Castiel would know it anywhere—so he wonders if he’s dreaming again. A dream within a dream.

“Cas, wake up, you stupid sonofabitch!”

“Dean, his pulse is slipping, dammit. We’re going to lose him.”

“ _No,_ ” Dean shouts with such ferocity that Castiel’s ears ring. “Cas, wake up, _please_ , goddammit, wake up—”

It’s like Castiel is there, but grounded by his body in complete darkness. He can hear Sam and Dean, is aching toward their voices, but his body remains immobilized, as if trying to shut down, _trying_ to die.

“Dean,” Sam says, sounding numb, “I...I don’t know what to do.”

“Cas? Cas, I know you’re in there, and I know you can hear me.” Dean’s voice is shaking with emotion, and Castiel feels a hand on his jaw. “We’re _family_ , remember? Sam and I need you, buddy, _I_ need you, with me, so wake up, _please_  wake up.”

Something about these words fuses soul to body, reconnects his brain to his limbs, or something.

Castiel wakes up in a jag of pain, dryness, and light, the world tipping dizzily around him.

“Thank God,” he hears Dean breathe, almost reverently. “Cas, can you hear me?”

Castiel’s throat is parched dry as bone and he’s too weak to speak, but his eyes flicker to Dean in affirmation.

“We need to get him food and water and we need to get this girl to the hospital,” Sam reports from where he's shifted a few feet over. When he catches Castiel staring at him, Sam smiles at him and says, softly, “Welcome back, Cas. We thought we lost you.”

“Cas, you’re a fucking _idiot_ , you know that?” Dean begins, and, bizarrely, Castiel wants to laugh. “And this is all your fucking fault. I _told_ you to stay home, to stay with Sam and me—”

“I know,” Castiel manages to whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Dean just glowers at him and growls under his breath before he pulls Castiel up from the floor and hugs him, long and tight and bone-crushing. Castiel wheezes weakly in Dean’s ear, trying to breathe, and Dean loosens his grip and smiles at him apologetically. Then he stares at Cas, long and hard.

Castiel averts his eyes, wishing with unadulterated fervor that he could just forget the last few days. The loss of Dean pangs in him hollowly like a drum, slow and aching and building.

“Dean, I’m going to take the rental and get this girl to the ER,” Sam says. “You take Cas in the Impala and get him to a motel. He should be fine with food, lots of water, and sleep.” He chews on his lip in worry and stares down at the comatose girl. “She’s in much worse shape.”

Dean nods, his eyes still tracing over every feature on Castiel’s face in what appears to be wonder or disbelief.

Sam scoops up the girl effortlessly—she must be nothing more than a sack of bones at this point—and Dean gives Cas a martyred look and does the same.

“Bridal-style,” Castiel murmurs as Dean tightens his arms around him a bit bruisingly. “I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be,” Dean says with a grunt, looking embarrassed. “It’s just...tactical.”

Castiel has a response in mind, but the next thing he knows he’s in the backseat of the Impala on the road glancing around in heavy-lidded confusion. He must have passed out.

"Morning, sunshine," Dean says from the front.

Castiel winces at the choice of words.

“You passed out,” Dean informs him.

“Duly noted.”

A moment of silence falls before Castiel says, “Dean,” and Dean says concurrently, “Cas—”

“You first,” Castiel says.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Dean says. “I don’t have any business telling you what you can and can’t do, and I don’t want to fight with you. You can call your own shots. So I’m sorry, you know, about before.” A moment of silence falls, before Dean adds, a bit more quietly, almost in a rush, “And I’m so fucking glad you’re awake for me to tell you that, because I honestly don’t know if I could’ve lived ending things on bad terms with you again.”

“I wanted to apologize as well,” Castiel says, wincing at the wispy rasp of his voice. There are so many things Castiel wants to say to Dean, a lifetime of things, but he settles with, “You were right in your concern. I wasn’t ready for the hunt and I was stupid to separate myself. It was arrogant and foolish of me and it nearly got us all killed. For that I’m sorry."

Dean makes a humming noise of acceptance in his throat and bobs his head. Silence strings between them, long and uninterrupted, and Castiel is dangling on the edge of sleep again when he hears Dean ask, “So what did you dream about?”

“Hmm?” Castiel says, pretending he didn’t hear the question.

“What did you dream about? Or what did the djinn make you see, I mean. I know it can really fuck you up, and the djinn almost seemed like he was happy about tormenting you. He kept asking me what angels dream about.”

Castiel closes his eyes, and smiles. It’s a bitter thing.

“So come on, what was it? Haloes, fluffy wings, gospel choir?” After Castiel doesn’t answer, Dean glances at him in the rearview mirror with a peculiar look in his eyes. “You…you dreamed of heaven, didn’t you?”

Castiel presses his cheek to the cool upholstery of the seat and closes his eyes again.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I did.”

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, so let me know if you catch any mistakes. Title is from Florence + the Machine's song "Only If For a Night."  
> [update] I actually wrote a follow-up to this story on request! You can read it [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/869908).


End file.
